Three Ways to Make Fans Roar and Revenue Soar with Indoor Stadium Navigation

Malou Damgaard
|
March
08,
2019

If stadiums were ever single-purpose venues, those days are long gone! Today’s stadium is a melting pot for sporting events, concerts, conferences, private events, and more. Add to that the multiple stakeholders, such as stadium owners, clubs, and sports federations, who all have different interests not to mention the expectations of fans, sponsors, and partners.

The modern stadium is indeed a versatile and diverse environment that has to meet the goals and expectations of a lot of different people, but it doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds.

A solid indoor navigation platform is a powerful tool that can help you satisfy fan expectations, boost sales, and improve operations and security.

In this blog, we dig into the fan experience and show you three ways you can make fans roar and revenue soar with indoor navigation.

#1 In-seat ordering

Fans may come for the game, but food and beverage is an important part of the experience. Globally, fans rank food and beverage as the most important element of the fan experience ahead of entertainment, technology and amenities. Food and beverage is only surpassed by safety and the overall environment, which comes as no surprise considering the security incidents that make headlines all too frequently.

While food and beverage is a key component to the experience, fans seems to believe that the area leaves much to be desired. In fact, fans would devote 43 percent of the budget to improving food and beverage delivery if they had control over the budget prepared to to be spent on improving the fan experience.

What frustrates fans the most is the speed of service. On average, 36 percent of fans, who infrequently or never make purchases, blamed speed of service for their reluctance to buy food, but it gets worse. Forty-two percent of US fans said they’ve giving up buying food or beverages in the past 12 months because lines were excessive. The same goes for 47 percent of international fans with Brazil (more than 60 percent) and Germany (50 percent) as the high flyers.

If you’re wondering how indoor navigation can help you solve these challenges, here’s the answer. By combining indoor navigation with a food ordering system, you can offer fans a smooth delivery service. Thanks to the turn-by-turn navigation, staff will never get lost bringing out food, and fans won’t miss important highlights waiting in line at a food vendor.

By integrating indoor navigation with your queue management system, you allow fans to see waiting times. This way, they can get an overview of the estimated waiting times at the different food vendors and choose to order from the one with the shortest waiting time, if they prefer.

#2 Guide visitor to the shop with the shortest queue and offer discounts along the journey

Speaking of waiting times, there’s nothing worse than buying tickets for a game you really want to see, but then ending up missing crucial plays, because you had to wait 15 minutes in line at a food vendor.

With the combination of a queue management system and an indoor navigation platform, you can show fans the estimated waiting time on the map in your stadium app. This means that fans can easily see how long it would take them to buy a drink, and if the queue is too long at the nearest vendor, they have the exact route to all vendors right there in the palm of their hand.

If you combine your indoor navigation solution with an indoor positioning system, you can see how people move in your stadium. This allows you to optimize your stadium layout and thereby reducing waiting time. For instance, you might find out that loads of fans gather in front of one food outlet and struggle to get back to their seat in time for the second half, while another food truck is practically deserted.

The combination also allows you to offer fans discounts along their journey in your venue, which can really boost your sales. The decision to purchase food and beverage is often based on impulse. In fact, a whopping 64 percent of fans say they make food and beverage purchases “on impulse”. So, offering fans location-based discounts can potentially make sales skyrocket.

#3 Ticket upgrades and easy parking

Another powerful combination is the combination of indoor navigation and an e-ticketing system.

Imaging offering fans the possibility to get a real map view of your venue, allowing them to see the pitch from different angles and upgrading to an available seat that gives them a better view. With indoor navigation and a virtual map of your arena, this is possible.

With this solution you can also give season ticket holders that can’t make it to the game the opportunity to sell their tickets, and thereby giving both them and non-season ticket holders a better experience of your venue.

Likewise, indoor navigation can be interface with your parking lot management system, so you can offer fans to find and reserve a parking space nearby their seat even before they leave their house. With turn-by-turn navigation directly from their front door to the parking space followed by their seat, you reduce stress and chaos and encourage fans to use your parking spaces.

If you want to know more about indoor navigation for stadiums, click the green buttons below to explore MapsIndoors and read our blog, "Why Is Game Attendance Declining When Fans Are Becoming Super Fans?".